Soumya Sarkar

The system of carbon offsets in the global agreement to restrain aircraft pollution, announced in Montreal in October, would increase costs for developing countries like India. The general a embly o...

An army of sickly and poorly educated children growing up in villages will continue to drag down the country as adults unle the nation's nutrition and education delivery systems are made more efficie...

Even as representatives from close to 200 nations meet in Montreal to hammer out a deal to contain aviation emi ions, India has expre ed its reservations on a global agreement unle some key concerns...

India's headlong rush to boost renewable energy in keeping with the spirit of the Paris climate summit has been tempered with the difficulties project developers are facing to secure inexpensive finance. This issue can be best solved by establishing a green bank to strengthen the rapidly expanding clean energy market, a recent report has recommended.

How much difference could a foot of water possibly make? For thousands of fishermen and vegetable farmers in the East Kolkata Wetlands, it could mean the difference between a decent livelihood and chronic want. And now the National Green Tribunal is taking an interest, which might yet save the beleaguered Ramsar site.

The 60 million people visiting Ujjain for the Kumbh Mela were not bothered about the dying Shipra and efforts to rejuvenate the holy river. What mattered was the pilgrimage that carried the promise of salvation.

While putting dying rivers such as the Shipra and Sabarmati on life support by transporting water at enormous cost from other river basins is measure that's earning populist praise, it raises serious questions on the transparent allocation of this increasingly scarce resource.

A general agreement to collaborate and boost trade and investment in nuclear and solar energy during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's fourth visit to the US could play a vital role in charting a sustainable future for the world.

Even as Bundelkhand shrivels under the onslaught of a prolonged drought, the government is going ahead with a grand scheme to link two major rivers at this southern edge of the Ganga basin. At a time when moisture has fled the land and the rain-fed rivers are down to a trickle, transporting water some 230 km in a canal, irrigating farmland on the way, appears to be a mirage to many.

Bundelkhand is a dirt-poor region where people are now desperately scratching the dirt for water. Only a few farmers have enough money to dig more than 50 metres and pump water out of the few aquifers that have not gone dry. A few others have built check dams and embankments to hold the rain where it falls, and their farms remain profitable. But such oases are too few and far between.

Bundelkhand is amongst the worst places on earth to be a farmer. Decades of land and water mismanagement made worse by anaemic showers and changing rainfall patterns triggered by climate change have led to untold misery for its largely agrarian population. But many community workers and experts say the situation is not irrevocable. The region may yet prosper by adopting better ways to conserve water, in step with a more sustainable and varying use of the land.

Bundelkhand, the size of Ireland or Texas at some 700,000 sq km, is home to some of the poorest people in India, an unforgiving land where about half of its 18 million people live under the official poverty line, close to destitution.